Comment by maddax | Hacker News Reader

Comment by maddax | Hacker News Reader

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Wow, just wow! Unfortunately I did expect your response from the HN crowd. You and I have very different ways of looking at the world.

The entitlement and privilege among software engineers in the US to have crazy high salaries and "perks" such as health insurance is exactly the reason why I will never move there. I think your last statement sums up the situation very well, but it baffles me how any decent human being would consider that to be a positive.

You may think I am crazy, but did you know that insanely high salaries of a select few is one of the reasons that directly or indirectly leads to income and wealth inequalities in the world, one of the biggest problems of our generation? While you may have excellent health care for $20/month, what about the barista at your local coffee shop? What about your disabled neighbor who got laid off for no fault of hers? How can you live with yourself while they die of cancer as they cannot afford to go to the hospital? And don't get me started on education. How that is viewed as a commodity rather than a basic human right astounds me.

I am very happy with my $60k/year job. I have more than sufficient for myself, and a decent amount to spare. I have excellent healthcare for free and independent of my job situation, and so do all my neighbors. I live in a city with no homeless, and no one desperately poor. I do engaging work for 7 hrs a day and religiously shut my computer at 4 pm, and pursue my many passions afterwards. I have 6 weeks a year of paid vacations, and travel to a handful of countries every year. I paid $50/semester to get educated at a top university, and so will my children. And I received a stipend to cover part of my living expenses. I love the fact that I do not have to worry about getting shot (as rare as that might be). I love living in a country with highly educated people all around with most having the skills of critical thinking. I love living in one of the most gender equal countries of the world (I am male). No offense to anyone, but I wouldn't trade this for a $250k/year job in the U.S. (as levels.fyi seems to suggest for my case).

And I could also expect the response to his response by you, probably none other than my own countrymen. (Origin from Scandinavia I assume?)

I moved out from Scandinavia to another country in Asia, with way more safety, better health care, way more educated population, and the added perk that I were offered 2x Salary before tax. Oh and the health care is actually there, not "free" so that people can claim moral high ground while in reality delivering mothers have no hospital to go to and non fatal young ill people are actively shunned away from health care, but it is there and it works for cheap.

You can make any moral or living standard superiority claim if you just cherry pick the stats (as the healthcare example above). As someone that have relatives in US, have lived (study/work) in both Europe and Asia, The North/West Europeans blatant naivety and sense of superiority towards US is shockingly embarrassing to say the least. (and your naivety is offensive, not only toward the US citizen you are trying to smear, but also toward your countrymen that have to live with the facade of perfection)

Edit: typo

I just find that Americans have little understanding on how things run in Europe. But same goes the other way around.

If you want to earn a lot - you go contracting in Europe. I used to save about half of my income when contracting 6 years ago in London. My rate was 470 GBP for 220 days out of the year. My expenses were taxes and 700GBP in rent. I saved 60k after tax... and I used to fly business class to Thailand, NYC and Mexico.

My income is technically higher, but expenses are through the roof. You sneeze here and it's $20 gone.

> did you know that insanely high salaries of a select few is one of the reasons that directly or indirectly leads to income and wealth inequalities in the world, one of the biggest problems of our generation?

Yes, but it's not the engineers and other well-paid workers that are the problem. They are still workers - they get paid for wealth produced. It's the insanely high incomes - which are mostly not salaries, BTW, but capital gains - of the top management and owners where all the money (that would otherwise have stayed in the pockets of those who actually earned it) goes.

Europe patches it up by taxing the entire top half of the scale more, and redistributing it to the bottom half - but it's still a hack, and it still has substantial wealth inequality as a result.

You can earn 250k and donate 190k if you want. 190k per year will go very far. If you don't to whom to give I can send you names of specific people who are struggling at the moment.

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